Houston, we have a 1st Amendment problem

Houston recently passed an ordinance through its City Council that has sparked quite a bit of controversy among conservative evangelicals.

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, a sweeping, left-leaning law trumpeted by the City of Houston and its openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, is supposed to protect gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination.

All well and good; but according to the Independent Journal Review, the ordinance to ensure nondiscrimination discriminates against those of faith who oppose it.

Some members of Houston's conservative evangelical base oppose HERO. They circulated petitions and gathered signatures in an attempt to get the law repealed. The opponents reportedly delivered more than 50,000 signatures to the city, well more than required to get the measure on the November ballot. The city subsequently announced that there were not enough valid signatures.

Opponents of the ordinance filed suit against the city in August. The city struck back, issuing subpoenas for pastors to turn over "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession" so that it could, according to Time.com, "determine how the preachers instructed their congregants in their push to get the law repealed."

The blowback to the subpoenas was so intense that, last Friday, the city backpedaled and dropped the word "sermon" from the subpoena, as well as "requests for pastors' teachings on sexuality and gender identity." The city still wants to see all the speeches, presentations, documents, text messages and emails that relate to the pastors' work to get HERO repealed, though.

Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, and a Republican candidate for governor, sent a letter to Parker's office requesting she immediately drop the subpoena requests.

As reported on Christianitytoday.com, Abbott wrote: "Government officials must exercise the utmost care when our work touches on religious matters. Your aggressive and invasive subpoenas show no regard for the very serious First Amendment considerations at stake."

Amen to that, brother!

The subpoenas are censorship pure and simple and they blur the line of demarcation that is supposed to separate church from state. How can the City of Houston's actions be seen any other way by anyone right- or left-leaning, evangelical or secular?

Of course, after the outcry, Parker broke out the politicians' primer and issued a well-crafted statement that said the subpoenas were "overly broad" and would be amended.

News flash, Mayor Parker. Still censorship.

Tossing a few deck chairs off the Titanic didn't stop the ship from sinking, and deleting a few words from an "overly broad" subpoena won't make it anything other than what it is — religious intimidation.

In the lawsuit, the group of Christians claims the mayor's office unfairly and possibly illegally denied their petition to have HERO considered as a ballot referendum by asserting that many of the 50,000 signatures on a petition were illegible or not verifiable.

Ed Young, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston, jokingly tells me he is "happy" to send his sermons to the mayor and has done so voluntarily in the past as a form of what Baptists call "witnessing to the Gospel of Christ." He says he did not receive a subpoena. The key word here is "voluntarily."

For a government official to try to intimidate or censor speech from the pulpit, or any other form of communication, is clearly unconstitutional.